The remaining schools in this year's TVJ's All Together Sing competition are pulling out all stops and spending big bucks in a heated race to ensure they come out as the event's top choir.

Schools are forking out as much as $50,000 weekly just to circulate phonecards for voting. And from all indication, there is no sign of slowing down as they continue to stage innumerable bake sales, ice cream sales, tie days and tag drive all aimed at keeping the 'vote fund' alive.

A letter published in The Gleaner on Friday, November 20, said "schools that are still in the competition spend approximately $30,000 to $40,000 on phone cards for voting each week."

However, when THE STAR contacted at least one rural high school, a teacher who opted to remain anonymous, said the budget sometimes exceeds the $40,000 mark.

"That's true, but sometimes we spend more than $40,000," she said. "This week it was about $60,000 credit overall we had." She said the credit is loaded onto various phones and then further sent out to other voters via text. After this is done then the vote-craze begins she continued.

different projects

Asked where the school gets money from to buy that many phone cards each week, she responded: "We have different projects that support it. We have cake sales, we have donations where each member of staff gives $100 and each student gives $20 and then we have people from the community donating."

She said no money is taken from state funds, as the principal would never approve such a move. Efforts to contact that principal were unsuccessful as her extension rang without an answer.

Another school said the $40,000 per week phonecard budget was an across-the-board affair. "It's almost the same here," the school representative said. "We do spend as much as $40,000 on phonecards per week we have to keep the school in the competition."

The woman said they organise regular bake and ice cream sales, tag drives and tie days that fuel the vote quote. "With tie days students are expected to wear a tie to school and make a donation," she explained. "They still pay even if they don't wear one."

Kay Osborne, general manager of Television Jamaica, said she was not aware that the schools were spending this much money on voting. She said it was not a bad thing however, as it showed communities were rallying around their schools.

She said, "Whole communities take pride in, and get a tremendous amount of pride from their students, so they rally around their schools. And that's what you want. You want families to sit and watch a wholesome family programme like this."

total value of cash prizes

Osborne, in her attempt to clarify other aspects of the letter, including the writer's argument that the prizes were not enough, said not everyone would be satisfied with the prizes offered. She however explained that the total value of cash prizes handed out to the top three last year was $1,050,000 and this year it will be $1,550,000. She said the $400,000 quoted in the letter as the prize for the winner, was merely a portion of the winnings as that figure was awarded for the development of the school's music room. In addition, she said, the winning school last year received $300,000 cash from TVJ and $150,000 cash from THE STAR.

When the Ministry of Education was contacted, Colin Blair, director of communication said: "The ministry encourages schools in their attempts to get students involved in wholesome extra-curricular activities, but would discourage excessive spending and time on extra-curricular activities, particularly where this would have an impact on the delivery of lessons."

He continued: "While All Together Sing is an important national activity we cannot allow it to dominate everything else that is happening in the schools. It is the schools' business to manage this activity. The Ministry has to ensure that schools are prudent in the spending of their resources."